


still, still this chance to drop off

by breathesthebest



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Gen, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-08
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-10-12 08:28:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20561291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breathesthebest/pseuds/breathesthebest
Summary: He hadn’t known, then, what help would look like.(Justin struggles with everything that comes after.)





	1. all that you left, you left for someone

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to explore Justin’s experience with trauma and recovery, as this storyline hit me hard. I relate to elements of it very viscerally, and I’m sad that the show hasn’t really delved into this aspect of his character yet; this character study is an attempt to do so. It begins immediately following season 3, so please anticipate spoilers. This is a two part fic, and will deal frankly (but not graphically) with the abuse described in S3. **Please heed the tags and take care of yourself if you think this content may be distressing or triggering to you.**
> 
> Also un-beta’d, so apologies in advance for any mistakes, typos, etc!

Justin tells them at Thanksgiving, and everything happens at once.

He hadn’t known, then, what _ help _ would look like. What comes after. The concept of help—of sobriety, recovery, normalcy—seem like impossible things. Static terms that imply a beginning and a middle and an end, fixed points in a future he can’t fathom. Some _ other side _ where he isn’t the person he’s always been. 

_Help_, it turns out, begins with ten days detoxing in a center that probably costs more than he’s worth. A dizzying series of endless check-ins and counseling sessions and group activities. The withdrawal is easier than it had been on Clay’s couch, effects lessened by a tapering suboxone prescription. Hardly better than what he’d been doing with Bryce’s oxy, but it’s also better than nothing. He barely remembers the first three days.

The center’s director schedules him for an outpatient program, tells them it means he’ll have a shot at spring graduation. _We believe it's essential to maintain a routine, a sense of normalcy. _

When he goes home, _help_ means thrice-weekly appointments with Mark, his substance abuse counselor. It means an addiction support group and a slate of random drug tests. Matt and Lainie don’t flinch; they watch him like hawks, fuss over his ridiculous schedule, exchange anxious private looks when they think he won’t notice.

Clay is almost worse. Sends texts whenever Justin is out of sight for more than an hour, snoops through his duffel bag when he isn’t around. He has the decency to look sheepish when Justin catches him at it one evening, and Justin has the decency to pretend he hadn’t noticed. They don’t talk about it.

Everything happens at once, and Justin lets it. He goes to the endless meetings and appointments, _ participates_, eats his fruits and vegetables, writes about his cravings in the humiliating journal his counselor gives him, all on the bet that it will make a difference. _ It has to work, _ he tells himself, like a mantra. _ It has to be enough. _

He remembers Monty in those anxious moments. Monty, with his fucked up family, poor and reckless and without a future, dead on the floor of a prison cell. Some miserable footnote with nothing left behind but a legacy of rage and the people he’d hurt. Justin is smart enough to know that this is his last chance. He looks at the Jensen’s faces, at Jessica, his friends, and even if it isn’t easy at least it’s _ something_.

Time passes fitfully and quickly. Eventually, his hands stop shaking. Lainie give him his one month sobriety chip on Christmas morning. 

“Technically a few days early,” she says, “but your counselor made an exception for the holiday.” 

“Not a bad start,” Clay tells him, void of sarcasm and actually _beaming,_ like even this is a gift. 

So Justin smiles his best, most bashful smile and slings an arm around Clay to ruffle his hair. Thanks them—for this, for everything. The cheap blue piece of plastic sits in his pocket like a stone.

He doesn’t mention that it seems absurd, because he won’t even be off the suboxone for another few weeks. They’ll give him a shot of something called naltrexone then; another drug with a name like alphabet soup. Another drug to help make him stop using drugs, as though that makes sense. But it’s been a long time since Justin has gotten really, properly high, and if they believe that means something he’ll let them. 

The truth, he supposes, is like this: the stupid chip he leaves in the bottom of his dresser is real. The weeks of craving, of wire-taut _ itching _ are real. Justin is one month clean and his hands don’t shake anymore. Justin is one month clean and he has a normal house, a family, another chance.

_ I love you, _ he doesn’t tell them, _ but I’m scared that won’t be enough. _

_(The problem, then, is like this: Justin gets clean, and then he starts having nightmares, and then he finds a new way to fuck everything up.)_

________

Sleep disturbances are a common side effect of the detox process. 

That’s what Mark, with his trendy clear glasses and youth pastor haircut, tells him. He suggests a melatonin supplement with a sympathetic twist of his mouth, because _ we can’t trust you with anything stronger _ goes without saying. 

On Sunday night, Justin manages a whole three hours before his eyes fly open and his heart is jackrabbit pounding against his chest. He stares at the ceiling for as long as he can stand, and finally gives up when the sky outside starts to lighten. Too agitated to doze and too tired to stay in bed, he slips quietly out of bed to let himself into the yard. If sleep isn’t happening, he can at least get a few push-ups in. 

What he doesn’t expect is to see Matt sitting at the patio table, engrossed by something on his laptop and—Justin realizes with a sense of absurdity—smoking a cigarette. It's strange and out of place; he doesn't think he's seen a single discarded butt in the entire neighborhood.

“Matt?” he ventures, and the older man _ jumps_, eyes cartoonishly wide. 

Matt hurries to stub the cigarette out on the heel of his slipper and curses when it leaves a black smudge. “Justin! I didn’t, ah, see you there. What are you doing up so early?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” he shrugs, trying to stifle a laugh. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“I don’t. Just… Bad old habit. A once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing,” Matt replies sheepishly.

“Your secret’s safe with me, I guess.” Justin glances at the laptop screen on the table, lit up with what looks like an academic paper. He can just make out the title—something about _ Young Adults _ and _ Psychotic Episodes _—before it’s hastily clicked shut.

“I couldn’t stay asleep either. Allergies, I think,” Matt supplies, scrubbing a hand over his face.

“Right.”

“But”—Matt straightens— “I could really go for some pre-dawn breakfast. You hungry?”

That’s how they end up in the living room, a plate of peanut butter sandwiches on the coffee table between them. 

“Sandwiches for breakfast, food on the suede couch,” Matt says through a mouthful, “we’re really breaking all the rules tonight. Or this morning, I suppose. Let's not tell Lainie.”

Justin laughs. It bubbles up with an ease that still surprises him. Maybe it’s because Matt is so unlike all the other men he’s known; the men his mother had dated, coaches, even Bryce’s father. Matt wears _ cardigans _. He gets misty-eyed watching Lainie’s BBC shows. He’s gentle, and dorky, and unassuming, and Justin thinks that’s why he trusts him. If not completely, then at least enough for it to mean something. 

So Justin risks it. Asks tentatively, “The thing on your computer—is that what you think is going on? With Clay?”

Matt lets out a long sigh. He seems to think it over for a moment, something conflicted flitting over his face before it smooths out. _Psychotic Episodes_. It sounds too big, too ominous.

“I don’t know. We’re working on it, but these things are rarely straightforward,” he answers. “You don’t need to worry, though, alright? Now that we know, he’s getting the help he needs. That's the important thing.”

It’s a more honest answer than Justin had been expecting. Not for the first time, he wonders if Clay knows how lucky he is.

“Yeah. He’s been doing a lot better. Like, mentally,” he murmurs, fiddling with the hem of his sweatshirt. “You guys are good parents.”

“Thank you, Justin. I think he is, too.” Matt catches his eye, and holds it. “What about you? How are you doing?”

“I’m sober, if that’s what you mean,” he counters too quickly, too tense, even though it’s not a lie. Matt puts down his sandwich to raise conciliatory hands.

“I know that. Of course I do. But that’s not all we care about, and—Justin, it’s okay if being clean doesn’t fix everything. It’s important that you know you can come to us when you need to. About anything. Insomnia, for example.”

_ We won’t throw you out if, even after everything, you’re still a fuck-up. _As though Justin doesn’t already know that. Like it isn’t half the problem.

“I know, Mr. Je—Matt.” A warm smile now, as proof. “I’m good.” _ I’m going to be good. _

_(It isn’t insomnia; after the first week of withdrawal, Justin sleeps just fine. The problem is that he can’t stay asleep without jerking awake, over and over, limbs frozen like it’s all happening again. _

_ He’d had nightmares as a kid too, for a while; even wet the bed a few times. Justin doesn’t remember when it stopped. Only knows that Jessica’s party brought them back. That then there was Oakland, and he learned that heroin sleep is the best sleep on earth. That now _ — _ somehow _ — _ the past has never felt closer, bearing down like a ballast.) _

________

“Have you told anyone else?” Jessica asks one night, apropos of nothing.

They’re curled up in her bed, whisper-quiet even with her parents out of town. A streetlight outside casts the shadow of a long tree against her curtains.

_ Was I the first? _

“No.” A mumble, true and not true at once. “I mean, I’m not—there’s a lot of shit going on right now.”

He doesn’t want to talk about it. Not here, with her warm skin pressed against him, where the real world doesn’t properly exist. Her hand finds his in the dark and he’s thankful he can’t see her face, that she can’t see his. 

“It’s okay. If you’re not ready, I get it. And I’m so insanely proud of you already,” she tells him, “but this stuff doesn’t go away, and—it’s okay to talk to people, you know?”

“I did. I told you,” he says. _ I told a gymnasium. I told you, I did that for you. _

“Not just me, I mean. Your could start with your family.”

_ They’re not my family. Not exactly, not really. _He shrugs because it’s easier than saying no; a pathetic gesture. She shifts against him when he doesn’t speak, breath ghosting along the swayed line of his collarbone in a gentle sigh. 

“You said it was your fault, before,” Jessica murmurs into the silence, “and I don’t think I know how to make you believe that isn’t true.” 

_ It is true, _ he doesn’t say. _ You’re too good to believe it, but it is. _ Because she doesn’t understand that what he let happen to himself he also let happen to her. That he let it happen again in Oakland. That the line between his sobriety and a fresh bag of brown powder is tenuous and paper thin. That he is weak enough to let it happen again. That it’s a matter of time more than it’s a question of _ if _.

A hundred responses curdle at the back of his throat, and Justin swallows them all. He says nothing because it’s easier to lean down and press his lips to the downy pate of her head, to fold around her, because Justin is a coward before he is anything else.

_ (Sometimes, guiltily, Justin wishes he could take it back. He shivers when Jessica ties up his wrists, feels her warm weight on his chest—and holds his breath when he feels it suddenly go still. _

_ “Is this okay?” she asks. Like he’ll break, or is breaking, somehow, beneath all the reckless want. “Yes, fuck,” he tells her, and they both pretend not to notice when she leaves the blindfold on the bedside table.) _

________

Basketball, at least, remains blissfully uncomplicated.

Practice gets him out of his head; enough to forget everything and just move_, _all muscle memory and sharp focus until he's too sweaty and worn out to think. One thing he can be unreservedly _good_ at, even if it's just for an hour after school. Sometimes it almost feels like it did before Jessica's party, before Hannah, and everything that came after. When he'd been healthy and on-track for a sports scholarship and way out. 

“Good work today, guys. Gonna need you to bring that energy to the game this weekend,” Coach Patrick says after practice, clapping as they leave the court.

He stops Justin as they file past with a grin on his broad face. “You too, Foley. Glad you’re back for the season.”

"Thanks. So am I," Justin smiles, and means it.

It all goes to shit in the locker room, when Luke sneers; an ugly thing, flat but bitterly angry somewhere underneath. “Coach doesn’t have to worry about Justy. He’s a _ survivor._"

And Justin, for his part, isn’t exactly sure what happens next. 

At first there is a dim awareness of his body lunging at Luke, fists swinging, heart beating so fast it feels like it isn’t beating at all. A muted sensation as his knuckles make impact with skin and bone, too distant to fully register. Then nothing. 

He doesn’t come back to himself until Charlie’s half dragging him out of the locker room and into the hall. The sound of Luke’s curses echo out behind them. Justin blinks hard, lets himself stumble out of the double doors and into the crisp evening air. Charlie lets him go when they reach the edge of the parking lot, eyes wide.

“I know he’s a dick, but what the hell, Justin? You almost hit _ me.” _

It’s quiet out here. Justin sucks in heavy breaths. Still out of it, left hand throbbing dully at the knuckles.

“Sorry,” he mutters and sits on the curb with shaky legs. “Fuck.”

Charlie folds down to join him, wringing hands over gangly knees. “It’s okay. Coach didn’t see—and Luke’s probably too embarrassed to mention it. You were really gonna mess him up.” 

The fog in his head dissipates bit by bit. Enough that a roiling humiliation creeps in, ramifications of the rally laying themselves out at last. _ They all know. They think you’re a pussy. _

“Are you okay?” Charlie asks after a moment, tentative. He looks very young; only a year between them, but still just a kid. Justin doesn't think he's ever been that young.

_ No. I feel like I’m fucking losing it. I can’t sleep and I really need to get high. It would be so easy. _

“Fine,” Justin breathes. 

_ (He doesn’t delete all of his dealer’s numbers. Comes close, once or twice. Changes Rob’s name to ‘Emergency Services’ in his contacts because if he’s ever been good at anything, it’s giving himself a coward’s way out.) _

________

He walks Tyler home on Thursdays. 

It’s not far; a two mile route to the Down’s house, another two to the Jensen’s. If anything, it gets him out of the house with a good enough excuse that Clay won’t find a reason to text him every five minutes. _ When are you coming home? Did you go to practice? Where are you? _

More than that, it’s surprisingly _ easy _—almost relaxing. Tyler takes pictures, tries to explain things like focal length and aperture, lets Justin talk about sports. Sometimes they even stop at the convenience store for junk food, or Monet’s for a cup of coffee.

There are times, too, when Justin thinks he should ask Tyler how he’s doing. If he’s alright. He lets the words die on his lips because something about it seems like dangerous territory. Like opening a door he won't be able to close. They walk, week after week, and neither of them mention the assembly, and Justin is thankful for it.

“Have you been working on your college applications?” Tyler asks one afternoon, messing with his lens cap as they make their way up a tree-lined street. It's as cold as it ever really gets in Crestmont, some of the leaves yellowed or browning.

It’s a ridiculous question, but one Justin is used to hearing by now. He wonders, idly, what Tyler would say if he was honest. If he told him he isn’t even sure he’ll still be clean next fall. That the idea of a _ future _ is so abstract, so foreign to him as to be useless.

“Nah, not really. Clay keeps bugging me about it, though.”

“Oh. I thought—no offense, but you’ve seemed kinda tired,” he says. “My parents and I are visiting Cal Arts in a few weeks.”

“Yeah? For photography?” Then, playful, for good measure: “I’m not tired. I’ll have you know my face always looks like this.” 

Tyler huffs a laugh and raises his camera to take a picture: a bird on a fencepost, framed by the branches of an oak. It’s quiet, but companionably so, punctuated by the occasional click of the lens shutter. Peaceful enough that Justin can pretend they’re just normal teenagers, friends by choice and not melodramatic circumstance, heading home to ordinary lives. 

When they reach the Down's house, Justin waves. “See you tomorrow." 

“Yeah, see you,” Tyler smiles. Then he pauses, turns back, and there's a timid apprehension in his eyes. 

“Actually—um,” he says, “I hope this isn’t weird, but. I just wanted to say that if you ever want to come to an H.O. meeting, that’d be cool? If you want to. I could introduce you to everyone, I mean. They really helped me and they, like, get it. More than most people, anyway. I mean, they won’t—they don’t care that you’re a guy. And Jessica’s there.”

There is a part of Justin that knows Tyler is being kind. It also does little to quell the spike of anger he feels at the words, the rigid exhausted frustration. Tyler, the would-be school shooter. _ The fucked up kid who needs babysitting_.

And something else, too: _ I’m not like you. What happened to me isn’t like what happened to you. It wasn’t like what happened to those girls. _How Bryce had closer the door and Justin had stared at it and done nothing. He’s struck momentarily by the urge to laugh: a room full of women who hate his guts, and have every reason to.

“No offense, Tyler, but I don’t need another support group. And I definitely don’t need an invite from you, of all people.” 

It’s cruel and he knows it as soon as he’s said it. Watches with a kind of numb remove as Tyler’s expression shutter into something embarrassed, wounded.

“No, yeah, sorry. You’re right,” he stammers quickly and looks away, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Justin sniffs, shrugs. Stalks off as fast as he can and doesn’t look back until he reaches the end of the block. By then, Tyler has gone inside. 

A cold stab of guilt followed by a terrible, undeniable sense of _ relief. _He isn’t sure which is worse.

_ (The Thursday walks don't stop, after that; it would give Clay something to fret over, and it’s not like Tyler has a good excuse to be anywhere else. Only now the silences are strained and halting. They pass Monet's without going inside. _

_ Justin knows it’s his fault. He knows that Tyler would be right to write him off, to think he’s an asshole instead of just shyly avoiding eye contact. He remembers the gallery show and the photographs. Thinks that even if he can’t say it out loud, Tyler is a better friend than he deserves.) _

________

Lainie is home from work early, which probably isn’t a good sign.

She’s waiting in the kitchen after practice. Has made them both smoothies because she knows they’re his favorite, which is an even worse sign. Justin wonders if the Jensen’s read that in some kind of parenting book; that food makes difficult conversations with problem teenagers easier. 

There’s a manilla envelope on the kitchen island. He eyes it warily as she takes a seat across from him.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she starts, pointedly. “I just wanted to discuss a few things, and it’s easier when Clay isn’t around to snoop.”

It does little to reassure him. “What things?”

“I met with your social worker today. The state has finally handed over your files and records, and I thought it would be a good idea to go over a few inconsistencies,” Lainie explains. “Is that okay with you?”

“Oh. Uh, sure.” He clears his throat to swallow around the sense of unease. Adoption requires a lot of paperwork. An entire tree’s worth, at this point.

“Great. This isn’t a test—just an overview.” It’s a strange combination of her mom voice and her lawyer voice, and Justin doesn’t know what to make of that. She thumbs through the sheaf of papers splayed out on the granite counter.

He realizes she’s waiting for a response, some kind of affirmation. “Cool,” he says. 

“Okay,” she begins. Shuffle, shuffle, the click of a pen. “Let’s start with the easy stuff. Do you remember your last physical?”

“Nah. Didn’t really go to the doctor a lot.” An apologetic understatement_. _

“That’s okay. We’re only trying to account for gaps, here—some missed vaccines and annual check-ups—to make sure we have a clear enough understanding as is possible.” Her tone is deliberate, careful, casual, like he doesn’t know better. _ White trash. _

“Do you remember your last vision test? Hearing test?” 

“We had them in middle school,” he supplies. Lainie nods and jots something down in her notebook.

“There’s also a flagged hospital record for a left elbow spiral fracture from 2013. It’s recorded as an incomplete assessment. Do you remember how that happened?” She keeps her face smooth and impassive; a calculated move for his benefit, he thinks. 

“I tripped and fell into a table.” The same thing he’d told the doctor five years ago. A rusty half-lie but automatic even now. 

He holds still and watches her, tries to figure out of she believes him, and only catches her gaze soften into something implacable. _ She’s not stupid. She’s a lawyer. _

“You must have fallen pretty hard."

“I guess so,” he shrugs.

There are more questions. More half lies, partial truths, and all of them familiar. It had made things easier, once. He isn’t sure it still does.

_ (Lainie hands him a copy of the folder when they’re done. “You don’t have to read it—but it’s your information, and it’s important that you have access to it,” she says. _

_ Most of it is familiar. Some parts, like the four anonymous reports to CPS, are not. All are marked as 'investigated, closed'. He shoves the folder under his bed and doesn’t look at it again.) _

________

“Can I ask you something?”

They’re sprawled out on their beds, surrounded by homework, and it’s like Justin already _ knows. _Because Clay never asks if he can ask a question, and it's only surprising that it’s taken this long. He'd been naive to think the older boy was just waiting him out.

“Yeah, shoot,” he mutters, highlighting a sentence over and over just to keep himself busy. “Unless you wanna know whatever the fuck _ turpitude _ means, 'cause I’m trying to figure that out myself.”

“I know you stood up at the assembly.” _There it is_.

Justin stills. He doesn’t have to look up to know Clay is brooding, chewing on his lip. Someone else's problem to take on.

“I mean, I know—something happened. And I'm sorry that whatever it was that happened... Happened. And I’m here whenever want to talk about it. Obviously.”

_Whenever you want to._ Like it’s an inevitability, like Clay hadn’t barely been able to conceal his disgust street-side in Oakland. _ I don’t want to talk about it, and I want people to stop telling me to talk about it. I told a gymnasium of people. Jess. It was a mistake and now it’s over. _

“Uh—I mean, I’m good. Thank you, though.” An earnest smile, a fervent invitation to let it go.

He doesn’t, of course. “Can I just... Ask you something? I need to know who. If it was someone I know. Or knew.”

“No,” Justin replies, “it wasn’t anyone you know.” The hollowness of it like a stone in his throat. _Paul, way back. Louis selling oxy from a motel. A man who drove a white Toyota. _People Justin barely knows, or barely knew.

“Okay,” Clay says, shifting with another restless pause. Then, “I think you should tell my parents, if you don’t want to tell me. Or, they can find someone for you to talk to.”

“I don't need a therapist,” he snorts. _ I don’t need another fucking appointment. _He wonders if Jessica has something to do with this, goes rigid at the thought of them _talking_ about him.

“There's nothing wrong with seeing one,” Clay retorts, infuriatingly matter-of-fact and just shy of defensive. “Seeing Dr. Ellman helps, lets me organize my thoughts, and—“

“I said I don’t need to see a shrink about it, dude. I'm clean. I'm good.” _ Let it go. _

Clay’s gaze doesn’t waver. “You’ve been getting—what, three hours of sleep per night? I mean, we share a room. It's not like I don't notice this stuff.”

Justin gets up. Paces over to the kitchenette, listless, the room suddenly too small, and whirls around to stare him down. “Your parents make you talk to that guy because you were literally having, like, hallucinations,” he snaps. “Now you’re all gung-ho about it? When exactly did you become the expert?”

“I’m not claiming to be!” Clay stands too, cheeks coloring, his voice raising now. “And they weren’t—don’t turn this around on me. You _ just _got clean, and I'd rather not see you relapse again, so yeah, maybe I don’t think it’s super healthy that there’s another thing you’re keeping from us.”

_ Keeping from us. _ A dirty secret, something he’s obligated to disclose instead of just _ forget_. Humiliation and anger swell in his chest like a vice.

“You know what I think, Clay?” Justin spits out. “I think you’re obsessed with fixing people because it means you don’t have to look at yourself. I think you’re pissed that I’m not fucking up right now because you don’t want to be the _ schizo_.” 

The word hangs there, ugly, in the air between them. Justin stays motionless, his heart beating fast with fury and fear and regret. But it works.

“_Fuck _ you.” Through gritted teeth like glass, sharp and entirely cold.

Justin waits to hear the slam of the door when Clay walks out, and then he breathes.

_ (The nightmares aren’t like the ones in movies. There are no perfectly composed scenes or flashbacks, but collages: amorphous sensations, memories real and half-imagined that bleed into one another, hideous vignettes. A hand on the back of his neck as the bed dips, the leather backseat of a car, be good or I’ll tell your mom. Pain or something worse. _

_ Sometimes he’s just running, running from something so quickly that his legs tangle up in flannel sheets he hasn’t slept on in years. _

_ And when Justin wakes, he comes back to himself in utter silence, entire body tense and trembling. He doesn’t thrash or shout. He relaxes each muscle one by one, steadies his breathing, and counts the quiet sounds of Clay’s inhales and exhales like the tick of a metronome.) _

________

It's a normal Monday night in the Jensen's kitchen, and that's when Justin fucks everything up.

And it’s stupid, because Matt is only trying to teach him how to make pasta. Something so innocuous—domestic, _ normal _—but it’s a bad day. It’s waking up with his heart jackhammering and never quite coming out of it, sitting through a full hour of Physics class and remembering none of it, gasping through a fit of panic in the bathroom after. The kind of bone-deep empty fatigue he can’t shake off, sandpaper eyelids, head sluggish and disoriented after too many sleepless nights.

Clay has committed himself to alternately avoiding and ignoring Justin for the better part of the week, which is makes sharing a room difficult. Justin knows he should apologize, should have done so the second he'd lashed out. It feels impossible. Easier to pretend everything is fine, even when breakfasts are stilted enough to be conspicuous. It's probably why Matt coaxes him into the kitchen in the first place. _Food first, then find a way to casually figure out why your teenagers are acting like strangers._

It's a bad day, but it's not like Justin isn't trying. He smiles at the right times, cracks a few jokes, kneads and cuts the pasta dough as instructed. He's a good liar. The kitchen smells like tomatoes and herbs. _Just get it done and you can fuck off to the outhouse. _Listen to music and stare at nothing, maybe try to sleep. Lainie is at the breakfast nook with a glass of wine, telling them about a local news story. Something about an invasive caterpillar. Orchards at risk. He stirs the sauce and tries to listen, he concentrates, and maybe that’s the mistake.

Justin isn’t exactly sure what happens next; how quickly or slowly. Only that he hears Matt’s footsteps, and feels a hand come to rest at the base of his neck, and then he isn’t in the kitchen at all.

_A dark room and scratchy sheets, then a stairwell, a hand pressing over his mouth, or gripping his hair too tightly, knees scraped against concrete, a light that won’t stop flickering, if you tell I’ll make sure you regret it _

Watches himself from a distance, as if through a very long tunnel. Justin sees his body spin and flail, strike Matt sloppily in the jaw, like the locker room with Luke, wild and uncontrolled, hip catching the handle of the saucepan, overturning—

and then it’s very still.

Justin blinks. He feels his back pressed against the flat metal of the refrigerator, hears the drumbeat of blood in his ears like a dull roar. Simultaneously there and not-there. Matt with a hand pressed to his chin and his face pale, diced red tomatoes and parsley all splattered on the floor between them.

“Justin,” Lainie’s voice, unsteady, “it’s alright, just—“

His feet move before his mind catches up.

________

Justin’s old neighborhood looks the same. 

It shouldn’t, he thinks. Should feel foreign now, after so many months with the Jensens, or_ changed. _ But the scuffed stucco faces of the houses are still there—the familiar scatter of trash against the fences. A dog barking somewhere. 

His feet and his hand ache hazily, like a sensation in a dream. It feels like he’s been walking for hours, but he's not sure that's true. The phone in his pocket—the Jensen’s phone—won’t stop buzzing. _ They’ll want it back_, he thinks. 

His mother's apartment looks the same, too. Justin wonders if someone else lives there now. _ Did the landlord ever fix the lock? Does it still stutter open with some jimmying and a credit card? _

The phone buzzes again. There is a number waiting inside it and thirty dollars in his pocket. He feels far away. _ It would be easy. _ Not like he can go back, not with the tomato sauce still cooling on the floor, the shape of Lainie’s eyes as he’d fled. 

Here's something: electric cars are nearly silent. What little sound the engines do make is artificial—to let pedestrians know they’re coming. Matt had explained this, once. Justin doesn’t hear it pull up until the slam of the door, until Clay is jogging up to the sidewalk.

His mouth is drawn into a small line but he doesn’t look angry. It doesn't make sense._ I hit your dad. _

“We really need to talk about you actually checking your phone,” Clay says, voice flat. 

Justin swallows. His tongue feels leaden in his mouth. “Why are you here?” 

“Why am _ I _here? I've been looking for you for over an hour. Pretty sure they changed the locks on this place, though, so you’re out of luck. Can we go home now?”

“I can't.” _It's not my home anymore. Maybe it never was._

“Yeah, you really can,” Clay replies. He’s strung tight and nervous. “Dad’s _ fine_, Justin. They’re just worried because you booked it. They— _ we _—just want you to come back to the house.”

“I fucked everything up,” he says, hoarse and a little slurred. 

“Nothing’s fucked up. Okay? But it probably will be if you try to run away again or—whatever.”

“I punched your dad.”

Clay blinks at him. “Yeah, well, it was an accident. If it makes you feel better, I’ve wanted to do it once or twice myself.”

Justin sways a little, the adrenaline that had carried him all but gone. Thinks about the number on the phone in his pocket, and how long it would take to get high if he texted that number now. _ Twenty, maybe thirty minutes. _Quicker if he walked to meet the guy halfway. 

_ This is your last chance. It has to be enough._

“Please,” Clay says, and so he goes.

________

The roads are mostly empty. Justin begins to come back to himself in increments, and neither of them speak.

He doesn’t open his eyes until the car stops. The Jensen’s house swims into view, sitting up above the sidewalk and the steps. Some of the lights are on, and he squints to see if he can make Matt or Lainie out through the windows. Clay shuts off the engine but doesn’t open his door. 

“I was going to text a dealer. To try to score.” 

The consonants break at the end. Justin hadn’t meant to say it. Thinks maybe he shouldn’t have, but he is _ tired _ and every part of him is heavy with the weight of it. 

“You didn’t.” As though it’s simple, as though it means something. 

He realizes then that Clay has no reason to believe this is true. That he believes it anyways, despite everything.

“I’m really fucking tired,” he breathes.

Silence, steady and expectant. The sense that he's breaking, or that something has broken. Nowhere left to run. So Justin says,

“I’ll do it—talk to someone—whoever. I’ll do whatever I have to.” _I'm done doing fucked up things._ "I'm sorry." 

_For calling you a psycho. For lying. For everything._

Clay doesn't reply. Just reaches out, slowly and carefully, and wraps his arms around him. Justin lets him. In many ways, it feels like the easiest thing in the world. He doesn't know what comes next; if concepts like _catharsis_ and _reaching_ _the other side_ are real. If they even exist in real life. There are many things he doesn't know.

There is, after all, only this: the soft steady metronome of Clay's breathing is real. His hands are warm where they twist in the fabric of Justin's jacket and it's _enough_.

_(The weight of his own hands, shaking now, but holding on.)_


	2. all of this hurt that's wilted off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! Thank you so much for your patience and encouraging words. I didn't go with as many editing rounds for this part, so sincere apologies for any typos or grammatical errors.
> 
> **This chapter includes non-graphic (coerced/survival) sex work, physical/sexual abuse, and opiate use. The F slur is used once.** Please let me know if there's anything else I overlooked. Take care of yourself. <3

Here’s something: Justin will, with varying degrees of regularity, probably attend NA meetings for the rest of his life.

Sometimes he tries to imagine himself as one of the program veterans. An apostle who never misses a week, who has an entire rainbow of sobriety chips under their belt to show for it. The people who greet each other like family, bring the grocery store pastries and boxed coffee, recites canned phrases, maintain sponsorships.

He tries to map out his own trajectory along the plot points of the stories they tell. First, the catalyst: an excessive painkiller prescription, a violent childhood, two tours in the arid heat of Afghanistan, and so on. Then the fall: either a slow burn or a rapid descent, but always into addiction. After, rock bottom: homelessness or divorce or an HIV diagnosis or something worse. 

Most essential to this variety of success story is the turning point. A rehab program or accepting Jesus or—of course—weekly NA meetings in the basement of a Presbyterian church. Some point at which the addict crawls their way out to _ find themselves on the other side. _A demonstration of transfiguration. Something that feels like a happy ending or a punctuation mark.

Once, in the dim light of their shared bedroom, Justin told Clay he was happy. Then he’d stuck a needle between his toes. The truth is that he doesn’t think he’ll ever really know where _ this side _ ends and _ the other side _ begins.

________

When Justin is seven he asks Maria Price if her dad ever puts his fingers in her mouth. The problem is that Mrs. Sullivan hears it and goes pale, pulling him aside to ask questions he doesn’t know how to answer. _Is someone hurting you? Is there something you want to tell me about?_

His mother’s phone rings that night. He hears her side of the conversation through the thin walls, the sound of her pacing, and he knows. When it’s over she comes to sit next to him on the couch. He’s watching Spongebob and her eyes are wide, full of something he will remember, many years later, as fear.

“Your teacher told me about something you said today,” she murmurs. The television screen goes dark. He stares at the black surface and sees the two of them reflected back, warped in the glass like miniatures in a diorama.

“You can’t tell lies about Paul. Okay, baby?” She holds his hand and squeezes. “Justin, look at me. You can’t say that stuff. You’re gonna make them take you away from me. Do you know what that means? Do you know where they’ll take you? What it’s like?”

He’s breathing too quickly. She pets his hair with spider-thin hands, pulls his head to her chest. It’s warm and maybe if he holds very still he might be able to hear her heartbeat.

“Do you understand, baby? I can’t get a call like that again. She could’ve filed a report. Why would you say something like that?”

“I don’t know,” he cries, even though he doesn’t know which part had been the lie.

(Later, when he replays the memory of this night, she will always be crying too. And sometimes, when he’s angry, he will wonder if that part was real at all.)

________

Dr. Najafi tells him to call her Melissa. She doesn’t get mad when he curses tripping over the door mat, so he stays.

The office is a large sunny room at the back of her house. It isn’t what he’d imagined; there’s no desk, only a few armchairs and a small sofa. Framed travel photos (a mountain trail, burnt orange rock formations jutting out into blue sky) hang on the walls instead of diplomas or certifications. Potted plants line tall windows that overlook a garden.

“I like to call myself ‘semi-retired’, hence the home office. That’s the therapist equivalent of working remotely to avoid wearing pants,” she explains when they sit. “Luckily for you, I always wear pants.” Lainie had used words like _ experienced _ and _ trauma-focused _ on the way over. Justin decides he likes _ semi-retired _better.

He traces the striping on the armchair upholstery as she goes over confidentiality. Knows the drill, considers it a small mercy that this means he doesn’t have to see the substance abuse counselor every week anymore. _ From one shrink to the next. _ People with money think it’s the answer to everything. Just pay somebody to fix you.

“Mrs. Jensen tells me you kids have had a rough few years.” He looks up. Melissa’s dark eyes are neutral over maroon bifocals, fingers linked over the crook of her crossed knee.

“I guess so. I don’t know how much she told you.” _ Not sure how much she knows, or how much she’d understand, or how much you would. _

“A very abridged history,” she replies easily. “I’d prefer to hear your version of it, eventually. But for now, can you tell me why _ you _want to be here? What you’d like to work on.” The smile on her broad, tan face is soft and genuine and encouraging. Deep laugh lines. He doesn’t know if that should make him trust her more or less.

“I can’t sleep,” he admits, leg bouncing up and down. “Like, nightmares. Sometimes I freak out and overreact to stuff. Drugs helped but I’m off those now. I lost it the other night and hit Matt—that’s Mr. Jensen. I didn’t mean to, but it was fucked.”

She stays quiet, waits him out, so he keeps going: “I mean, everything’s really good. With the Jensens and everything. It was a lot worse before, so—I don’t know why I’m all messed up now. I don’t want to screw it up. I guess that’s why I’m here.”

He doesn’t tell her that the Jensens are never going to throw him out, and that this is half the problem. That if he doesn’t figure out how to right himself he’ll only drag them down, burden them. How he keeps $40 in cash, a utility knife, and a small box of protein bars at the bottom of his duffel bag, ready to go. He isn’t going to make them watch him relapse again.

“Sometimes,” Melissa tells him, “things get worse even as they get better. When we’ve been in unsafe situations for a very long time, the hardest part is often getting our brains to recognize that we’re safe. If drugs were a coping mechanism, sobriety can bring problems to the surface.”

It sounds convenient_. _ Talk to a stranger for 45 minutes each week and somehow leave more whole than he was before, rewire his brain until he's normal. _ Running away wasn’t enough. Detoxing once, twice wasn’t enough. Getting clean wasn’t enough. _

“I don’t know if this is even going to fix anything.”

“Maybe not. But you’re here,” she says, and it almost feels like a challenge. “So let’s try this: you lay out all the bullshit—the hard stuff—and I promise not to look away. We do our best to figure it out one step at a time. Worth a shot?”

And Justin shrugs, but he stays.

(If, a year ago, somebody had told Justin he’d go to a shrink and _ keep going_, he would have laughed in their face. He refuses to call it ‘progress’, but it must mean something.)

________

His first john is a man as nondescript as his rental car. Short greying hair, a polo shirt and sensible brown leather shoes. He’s listening to _ This American Life _ on the radio. He could be somebody’s father. They drive in silence to a hotel in North Oakland. Inside, a suitcase and a stack of dry cleaned shirts sits on one of the double beds. There’s a convention lanyard looped over the back of a chair. It’s a nice enough place; _ company money_, Justin thinks.

“You look a little young,” the man says, studying him.

“I’m 19,” Justin lies. He wipes sweaty palms on his jeans, scared or dope sick or both. The man nods and leans over the desk to sprinkle out a small bump of white powder. He cuts it into two thin lines with a credit card and steps aside.

“So I know you’re not a cop.”

Easy. Justin snorts it in one fluid motion, watches dizzily as the guy finishes off the rest. A sudden rush but it’s the wrong kind, jittery, so he leans heavily against the wall.

“What’s your name?” The man starts to undo his belt. There’s a buzzing in Justin’s head that won’t let up. 

“Bryce," he answers.

(After it’s over he goes straight to the dealer. Buys a needle this time because he needs it fast, the hot white nothing, and badly enough that he holes up in a dirty gas station bathroom to shoot it. Misses the vein twice with his whole body shaking, but when he depresses the plunger and curls up against the cool tile of the wall he doesn’t think of anything at all.)

________

Matt pretends nothing is wrong for the better part of a week.

Which is absurd, because there’s a faint pink-purple bruise on his jaw that says otherwise. Justin wonders if his students have asked about it. Wants to throw up when he imagines what Matt tells them, if it’s anything like one of his own old chestnuts. _ I fell down the stairs, fell up the stairs, dropped my phone on my face watching Youtube in bed, got hit by a ball during practice. _

Lainie had pulled him aside the morning after to promise in at least a dozen ways that they weren’t angry, that Matt hadn’t meant to startle him, that everything was okay. And it’s not that Justin doesn’t believe her, but he _ doesn’t believe her_. Not with the way Matt's avoiding being alone with him in a room, how he doesn’t ruffle his hair like before, how their movie night came and went. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. Nobody wants to live with somebody who’s going to fly off the handle and hurt them.

So after the sixth straight breakfast of guileless smiles and “Good morning, Justin”s, he decides to put an end to it one way or another. Hovers in the doorway of Matt’s office with his palms sweating and his heart hammering. _ Just get it over with. _Matt glances up from the screen when Justin clears his throat.

“Hey, kiddo. What’s up?”

“Uh,” he swallows, leaning into the door frame. “Do you have a second?”

“Of course,” Matt nods. _ Maybe he’s been waiting for this. Maybe he wanted you to say it first. _

“Okay. I just—wanted to apologize. For, uh, hitting you.” Like eating glass. _ Just get it over with, whatever it is, fucking yell or tell me you’re disappointed or whatever mild-mannered middle class dads do. Do anything else. _

Matt only blinks, though, as if taken aback. “Justin, that’s really not necessary at all. It was an accident. Water under the bridge.”

“It’s not,” Justin shakes his head, trying to stay patient. “You—listen, it’s okay that you’re pissed. You can just say it. I can take it.”

“What leads you to believe that I’m mad at you?” The look of concern and confusion on Matt’s face draws him up short. Cold sweat prickles at the back of his neck.

“I just know, okay? You don’t want to watch movies anymore. You’re avoiding me, you—“ he stops, chews his lip. “I just know. You’re different.”

Matt’s eyebrows draw together and then smooth over, as though something is making sense. 

“Justin,” he says slowly, “that is the last impression I’d ever want to convey. I thought I should give you some space, that you might want it. I can see, now, why you’d interpret that as anger, but I promise it wasn’t my intention. I’m sorry you were worried about that.”

He tries to process this but it doesn’t make sense. “I hit _ you_.”

“You reacted reflexively. That was out of your control,” Matt says gently. “I violated your space in a way that startled you. It’s my job to make sure I don’t put you in that position again.”

Justin searches his expression for any sign that what he’s saying isn’t true, sees only overly earnest eyes and relaxed shoulders. He feels unmoored and foolish and tangibly _ relieved. _

“Oh.”

“I promise—if I’m ever upset, we’ll talk it over. Okay? Besides, you have a pretty weak left hook.”

It’s a kind of wry humor that reminds Justin so much of Clay, startling a laugh out of him.

“Um—I’m not mad at you either. Or scared of you, or whatever. We can still watch movies and stuff. If you want, I mean.”

Matt’s smile is open and terrifyingly sincere. He stands, stretches, says, “I’m glad to hear it.”

“I didn't mean to interrupt your work.”

“Oh, I was hardly working. Have you ever seen _ Seven Samurai _?”

“No?”

“Good, let’s make some popcorn. You’re going to love it. Kurosawa was peerless—one of the greatest directors of all time. Actually, as far as depictions of late medieval Japan go, it’s surprisingly...”

(Justin dozes off within the first half hour, drifting in and out of consciousness to dialogue he can’t understand. Blinks his eyes open blearily when the music swells and feels Matt’s hand resting feather-light on his head, fingers carding through the curls. He falls back asleep.)

________

He tells Bryce after a party in freshman year.

Not all of it. Just the parts he thinks he’ll understand, the parts he thinks he’ll believe. Drunk enough that he can wrap his whisky-leaden tongue around most of the words, and he doesn’t cry.

“That’s fucked,” Bryce says, rough like maybe he means it. “That guy was a freak but—didn’t know he was like that.”

Justin closes his eyes. Sinks back into the pool house couch and feels the world slipping away around him, molten and quiet, easier.

He comes back to himself when Bryce asks, “Why didn’t you try to stop him?” 

The taste of bile rises at the back of his throat because Justin tried, and tried, but Bryce knows him, and he knows that he didn’t try hard enough. He blinks hard. Even through the dizziness Justin registers his expression as one he’s worn once before. The same vague curiosity, half-smothered once in a sympathetic hiss at a boot-shaped bruise on Justin’s side. Bryce had reached out fingers to ghost over the purple-pink striations. Had pressed down experimentally just once, watching him flinch back with the impartial, clinical remove of a scientist.

“Couldn’t,” Justin slurs. He closes his eyes against the slow spin of the room.

(It’s a curiosity he will recognize again, one day, in the doorway of Jessica’s bedroom. Bryce bent over a bed in the dark. His hands on her belt, echoing through him.)

________

On the way home, walking past Monet’s, Justin asks Tyler if he’s in the mood for a donut.

That’s how they wind up in the same booth they’d sat in weeks ago. Steaming cups and pastries are a buffer between them in the stilted silence, and Justin kills time by picking at his napkin. He tries to pretend he doesn’t notice the confused glances Tyler keeps shooting his way. _ Stupid to put it off for this long. _

“I—uhm,” he starts, clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m sorry. About the shit I said when you brought up the H.O. meeting.”

Tyler’s eyes widen a little before he looks away. “Oh. It’s okay. I mean, you were right. It was a stupid thing to ask.”

“No, it wasn’t. You were trying to help and I was being a dick.” _ I was trying to shut you up. I would have said anything. _“I guess I was just—I don’t know. Ashamed, or whatever.”

It’s a kind of vulnerability like pulling teeth, overexerting a previously unused muscle, and he feels his face flush with it. But the corners of Tyler’s mouth twitch up almost imperceptibly, some fragile understanding passing between them, and maybe it’s not as bad as he’d imagined it would be.

“Yeah. I get it, I think.” Tyler finally looks him in the eye. Justin is struck by how strong and sure he is now, how unlike the person he’d been two years ago. _ I wonder if he knows. I wonder if I’ll know when I get there. _

“I didn’t mean the shit I said. I’m serious. The person you are now—you’re really fucking brave.”

“Thanks,” Tyler says. Ducks his head and adds, “You too.”

Justin doesn’t ruin the moment with a scoff even though he wants to. Lets the moment last for as long as he can stand it before he claps his hands together and says, “So, the donut peace offering worked? We can be, like, cool again? Because Monet’s donuts are _ really _ fucking good. I feel like forgiving me is definitely worth it for that.”

Tyler laughs and it's surprised but genuine. “Sure. But another wouldn’t hurt.” 

“Don’t push it, Down.”

“Actually—well, feel free to say no,” Tyler says, scratching the back of his neck, “but have you ever been to, like, a punk concert? Cyrus and those guys invited me to this thing on Saturday. A basement show, or something. It’s not really my thing but I’m taking pictures for the band. If you wanted, you could come with us?”

A peace offering too, maybe, or a compromise. He’ll take it.

“Yeah, fuck it. Why not.”

(He leaves the show sweaty and bruised and grinning his ass off, voice hoarse, eardrums ringing, stone-cold sober and _ weightless. _ Makes Tyler promise to bring him next time as they stumble home, slings an arm around his bony shoulders knowing he’ll understand it means _ thank you. _

When he climbs into bed and falls asleep it’s the best rest he’s had in years.)

________

Justin is 4 years old when he learns to lie. 

Mrs. Horvat pulls him out of the apartment complex stairwell and into her living room, where she sits him on the couch and lets him pet her fat gray cat. They listen to his mother’s new boyfriend reel and shout, walls thin enough that it almost sounds like the glass is breaking in the same room. The old woman brings him a plate of stale cookies that taste like almonds and steps outside to talk to the police when they arrive.

“You knock my door when you need,” she tells him in heavily accented English. “You come next door, sweetheart.” 

He’s half-asleep when his mother finally comes to retrieve him. There are bruises on her neck and on her arms, and she carries him all the way to his bed. Rick is gone and so are the policemen.

She holds both his hands and says, “There’s things about us that other people won’t understand. They aren’t gonna help us, baby. The cops aren’t gonna help people like us. You can’t tell them anything. We have to look out for each other, and that’s it, okay?”

(He believes her because Rick comes back the next day. Eventually, Mrs. Horvat moves away.)

________

Justin finds a letter with his name on it in the mailbox after school.

It’s rumpled, the handwriting familiar in its messiness and the clumsy closeness with which it resembles his own. For the first few seconds, standing at the front door with it clasped in his hands, Justin’s fingertips go completely numb. Then he goes inside and locks himself in the upstairs bathroom and reads it four times.

The contents are rambling but decidedly lucid. His mother tells him that she’s living in a women’s halfway home on the outskirts of Fresno. She tells him that she’s clean and has a part-time job at the deli counter of a supermarket. Tells him _ I’m saving up for a place, _ and _ I miss you so much, _ and _ I’ll buy you a bus ticket just come see me. I know a nice family is taking care of you. I’m so happy you’re okay baby but I need to see you. I’m doing so well. _An address and phone number are scrawled along the bottom. 

Justin believes her. She’s been sober before, for months even; long enough for shiny hair and healthy skin and clear eyes. Like the day she let him skip school and they drove down the coast to watch a rocket take flight. She’d smiled and it had been as bright as the arch of smoke on the distant slope of landscape, as improbable and real.

He waits until Sunday morning to show Lainie, when she’s folding a pile of laundry on the couch and everyone else is gone. Her eyes betray nothing as they scan the pages, mouth a straight line.

“Should I write to her?” he asks. “Or call her?” _ I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Tell me what to do. _

“I think that’s up to you, Justin,” she replies slowly. Looks up and continues, “We won’t stop you from contacting your mother. And if you want to see her, we may be able to arrange that. As long as we can be sure it’s safe for you to do so.” 

He chews on a ragged fingernail. Already knows the cost of a Greyhound ticket to Fresno ($22) because he’d looked it up, guiltily, at 1:00 am the night before. Hadn’t expected her to entertain the idea and doesn’t know what to do with it, now.

“Right, yeah. I guess—I’ll think about it,” he mumbles noncommittally. They had stayed in a women’s shelter for a month, once. It hadn’t been too bad. The nuns were friendly and they never had to live out of a suitcase. What would he say to her? _ I have a new family. They live in a nice house and they always have a shit-ton of food. _ Things his mother had never known—would never know, maybe.

But there are things the Jensens will never understand. When he looks his mother in the eyes she sees him, too. Everything he can’t wash off. Desperation and adrenaline, the steady drumbeat of _ survive survive survive at any cost _ because nothing lasts forever. _ I don’t know why people play the lottery, _ Clay had mused a little disdainfully, glancing at a billboard on the highway one afternoon. _ The odds of winning are like one in multiple millions. _ And Justin had laughed and shoved his fists in his pockets and thought _ you don’t understand anything that fucking matters. _

Lainie slips the letter back into the envelope and smiles. “Take your time. There’s no rush, and we’ll support you in whatever you decide. She sounds like she’s in a good place, but our main concern is what’s best for you. Her reaching out won’t jeopardize the adoption. I don’t want you to worry about that.”

“Are you sure?” he asks. It’s something he hadn’t even considered and it sends a rush of panic down his spine. 

“I am. Even if she were to fight to regain custody, she’s not in a position to have it restored,” Lainie reassures him. “Your home is here, Justin. That’s not going to change.”

“Okay. That’s—yeah, that’s good.” He slips the letter into his pocket. 

“Why don’t you help me fold these?” She asks with a kind of measured nonchalance. He knows what she’s doing, because nothing gets past Lainie, and his shoulders are a tense line. Thankful for something to _ do, _ he jerks a nod. 

There’s a nature documentary playing quietly on the TV. He picks up a dish towel and folds it once, twice. A school of fish swim in a glittering mass on the screen. Lainie loves the ocean. Amber had loved it once too; she’d kept a small paper bag of polaroids above the refrigerator and showed them to him once. A group of ragged red-faced children splashing in the waves. She was the smallest, mouth caught in a peel of reckless laughter.

_ When I was eleven, I think. This little group home near Jersey City, _ she said, arm around him, fingers tracing the glossy surface of the picture. _ We hitched out to Rockaway Beach. I’d never seen the horizon like that before—so big. _

A month ago he’d left an NA meeting early. A woman named Anita shared her story, told the room about how she’d been too high to do anything when her husband struck her daughter hard enough to knock two teeth loose. Justin hadn’t stayed to hear the rest, had barely made it to the shitty little church parking lot to puke his guts out.

“I lied to you before,” he blurts out. “About the broken elbow thing in my file.”

Lainie’s hands still at the edge of the laundry basket. “Okay,” she replies. 

“Yeah.” He looks away and picks at the tired elastic in a pair of socks. “It was, uh, one of my mom’s boyfriends. He caught me playing around in this stupid leather jacket of his, lost his shit. He grabbed me and I fell into the coffee table, so—that part was true. The part about the coffee table was true. My mom told the ER people I was running in the house.”

Lainie doesn’t look surprised or angry. He thought she might be; for lying, and so often. For admitting to it. That her expression is soft and sad is worse. _ She knew, of course. In some ways, she knows what you are. _

“Justin,” she says, “that should never have happened to you. And I’m so sorry that it did. I believe you, and I’m happy you feel comfortable enough to share this with me now.”

He shifts around the pit in his stomach, shrugging. “There’s other stuff I haven’t told you. Other stuff I lied about.” _ Telling on yourself. _

“That’s alright. You’re not obligated to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“It’s not like I don’t trust you guys,” he replies hastily, “because I do. Like, a lot.”

She rests a hand over his. The warmth radiates up his arm. “I want to hear anything you want to tell me. But only when you’re ready.”

He nods. Feels dizzy and tight-throated because it’s too much, all of this, the fucking letter and everything it has to _ mean. _

“I don’t think I want to talk to her, yet.”

“That’s more than fine. You can take all the time you need, no matter how long that is. You don’t ever have to contact her if you don’t want to.”

“It wasn’t all her fault. A lot of stuff, the bad shit—it was out of her control.” He doesn’t know why he’s saying these things, why he feels it’s so important to tell her. _ I still love her, and I abandoned her, and you don’t understand. She wanted to run away just as much as I did. She was trapped too. _

“Maybe that’s true,” Lainie says softly. “It’s not my place to assign blame, or to litigate. The only thing I do know is that it was the responsibility of the adults in your life to protect you, and that didn’t happen. It’s okay to love her, the good parts of her, even if it doesn’t excuse the bad. It’s not a betrayal to feel pain about what happened, or her part in it.”

His eyes are wet and his throat closes around any words that might come next. Then Lainie looks at him, _ really _ looks at him, with the same tenderness she looks at Clay with. Like he’s worth all of this bullshit, like she won’t turn away no matter what. Like all the things she can’t understand don’t matter, not in the ways that count.

What he does next is impulsive, and childish, but when Justin wraps his arms around her she holds on tight. 

(The social worker contacts Amber so he doesn’t have to. It hurts just as much as it’s the easiest thing in the world.)

________

Justin meets Stevie at the youth shelter. 

He’s rough and wild in a way Justin isn’t, prone to rage and fists, knows how to defend himself. He’s been on the streets a long time; long enough that he could probably navigate Oakland with his eyes closed. When Justin comes back from a motel with a black eye, he lies and says it was a security guard. Stevie just sucks his teeth and says, “A fucking rent-a-cop? If you can’t hold your own, you get what’s coming to you.”

But Stevie’s there when the shelter workers do a sweep of their lockers, slips Justin’s works and foil into his back pocket with a sleight of hand so good it’s almost imperceptible. He gives him a pocket knife. He shows him which grocery store dumpsters are safe to get food from and which pour bleach on their day-old bread to keep the homeless and the freegans out.

“City hates street kids,” he tells Justin, “but I got your back if you got mine.”

Then one of the shelter kids puts a hand on Stevie’s shoulder and says the wrong thing, and Stevie pummels him until his nose pours blood. It's bright red and smeared across white linoleum.

“Don’t touch me, you fucking faggot,” he hollers. Justin watches, frozen. _ If you can’t hold your own, you get what’s coming to you. _

(They find an abandoned apartment building to squat in after they get kicked out. Stevie disappears after a few days. There’s no way to know what happened to him, and Justin hadn’t learned his last name.)

________

Zach’s mom goes out of town for the weekend and, miraculously, Alex convinces him to have a party. This would be fine if it weren’t for everyone being so fucking _ weird _ about it.

It takes no less than six reassurances to convince Clay that yes, he’ll be fine with people drinking. Yes, he’ll stay sober. Yes, he’ll leave if it’s too much too soon. No, he isn’t going to be _ triggered _ into a relapse at the sight of beer. When they get there, Tony levels him with a raised eyebrow and says, “I’m keeping my eye on you.” Justin rolls his eyes but lets it slide because he kind of owes him after hurling on his shoes that one time.

It’s hardly a rager; just their mismatched group and an assortment of the cheapest 12-packs a fake ID can buy. Justin spends the first half of the evening curled up on the couch with Jess, who nurses a ginger ale in solidarity. They observe Zach from afar, intermittently cackling as he hovers anxiously around every breakable object. Eventually these objects include Alex, who grows more unsteady on his bad leg with each drink.

Things pick up after the first hour or so. This might have something to do with the fact that Clay has discovered he _ loves _ hard cider, and Charlie is quite possibly drunk for the first time in his life. Someone turns up the music, and the dining room table is haphazardly converted into a beer pong table, and the rest is history—possibly literally with the way Tyler is taking pictures.

“No dude, you’re just throwing the ball in the _ direction _ of the cups,” Justin explains to Charlie, who’s doing his best impression of a disoriented Golden Retriever. “There, hold it like that. Then you have to focus on a _ specific _ point. Aim with your elbow.”

“Pretty sure that’s cheating,” Alex remarks from across the table. “Foley’s not your teammate, he shouldn’t be allowed to coach you-”

“YES! ” Charlie hollers as the ball circles the rim and plops squarely into one of the plastic cups. As if on cue, Zach rushes forward to grab the beer from Alex’s hands, downing the whole thing to keep him from getting at it.

It feels _ good_, even sober. There is a kind of elation to realizing they might all be capable of sharing a bond that isn’t just navigating disaster, that they might still be regular teenagers when all is said and done. 

Charlie reaches out and throws an arm around Justin, breathy laughter too close to his ear, and it’s _ almost _ a problem. He stiffens, pulse quickening even if only for a moment. Focuses on his breathing, the weight of his feet against the floor. So maybe therapy isn’t entirely useless.

“Hey kid!” Tony calls, waving Charlie over, “Help me clear off this table for another match, huh?”

Justin doesn’t miss the little nod Tony shoots in his direction. The weight leaves his shoulders and he relaxes, slips out the sliding door while everybody’s good and distracted.

The patio is dark and he takes a seat on the edge of it, brushes the tips of his shoes over the grass below. Just a minute, some fresh air because it’s always helped calm him down. _ Everything always happened behind closed doors, _ he’d told Melissa. In shitcan apartments or the claustrophobia of his bed or the backseat of a car. _ Outside's easier._

He’s getting ready to head back in when Jess steps out, padding over the wood with her heels kicked off. She’s beautiful like this: hair loose around her shoulders, carefree and smiling.

“Hiding from me?”

“Nah. Just needed a break from watching everybody suck at beer pong.”

Jessica flops down, lays her head on his shoulder, and all the remaining tension ebbs away.

“Everything okay?” she asks softly. “If the whole party thing is too much, I can make up an excuse for us to split.”

He kisses her forehead. “I’m good. Is it corny to say it’s kind of fun to be sober at one of these things, for once?”

“Not at all. I love watching other people act like idiots,” she grins.

They lapse into a comfortable silence. Jess is good at those in a way Justin never has been; easy quiet moments, transitional. He breathes in the lemony shampoo scent of her hair.

“I forgive you, you know. I don’t think I’ve said that yet,” she murmurs.

He freezes. “Jess—“

“I’m not just saying it for you. And it’s not even because I love you. It’s just the truth.”

“I don’t deserve that.” Disentangles himself to face her even though it’s painful. “You don’t have to say stuff like—like that.”

“Tough. You don’t get to decide.” Her perfect stare—the first thing he’d fallen in love with—is fathomless and totally resolute. 

“The stuff I told you doesn’t change anything. It’s not an excuse.”

Last week, hunched over in his chair, he’d told Melissa about Bryce and the party. Things he hadn’t told the cops or the attorneys, things he’d never be able to tell Jess or maybe anybody. _ Stopping it would make it real. Telling her would make it real. I thought it would be better if it was like it never happened for her. I never got to choose and then I chose for her and it was the worst thing I’ve ever done. _

“I know. It has nothing to do with that. I just—forgive you for myself, if that makes sense.”

Everything falls away until it’s just the sound of her breathing. For all he’s lied to her, Jessica has never once lied back. 

She says, “It’s not even like I can say for sure what forgiveness _ means_. It’s just something I know. I want that for you, too. To let it go.”

And she kisses him then, long and slow and sweet, and it feels like _ something_. Not absolution or amnesty, because that isn’t how this works. Justin will live with the pain he’s caused others for the rest of his life. But right now, in this moment, maybe one part of him molts away and another slots into place.

He kisses her back. In some small way, because he could never forgive himself anything, he starts to forgive himself. 

________

Getting Clay from the party to the car takes a small village. For a reedy kid, he knows how to drag his feet when he’s drunk.

“I’m completely good,” he assures them, smiling blearily. “I’m good—as _ hell_. I could have another beer.”

“Yeah, man, I bet you could,” Zach says, steering him along. “But your bro here looks kind of tired, so you better make sure he gets home okay.”

Justin yawns theatrically enough to convince Clay, who nods dutifully as Jess buckles the seatbelt for him. “No, you’re right. Guess I better do that.”

“Have a fun morning, tomorrow,” she smirks, closing the door. 

“Yep. Good morning,” he replies amiably. Justin can’t help but laugh as he pulls the car out into the street, waving a hand out the window.

Clay shoots him a glazed, perturbed look. “What’s so funny? Oh—he called you my bro. That’s kind of crazy, right? Like… The last time I was this drunk-"

“I thought you said you weren’t drunk.”

“Shut up. Whatever. _ Last _ time I was this drunk was when _ you _ made me drink a 40,” Clay continues. He smiles dopily, but Justin can’t help but feel a twinge of regret. It’s jarring, even now, to remember the person he’d been. 

“Yeah, that was fucked up. I’m sorry about that,” he mutters. 

“What? No, don’t… Don’t get all mopey, ‘m just saying. I’m glad your my brother now. It’s ‘dope’,” Clay slurs, uncoordinated air quotes around his best Justin impression.

“You’re not usually this corny, Jensen. Maybe we should get you drunk more often,” he teases, grinning.

Clay blows a raspberry in consternation and Justin _ wishes _ he could record a video and drive at the same time. “I’m normal. Shut up,” he grumbles. “I just mean—we’re good. Everything’s been so fucked up but, like, it’s getting better kind of. ‘M not seeing dead people and you’re clean and we’re both actually sleeping. Like… I’m happy. We’re happy, right?”

Once, in the dim light of their shared bedroom, Justin told Clay he was happy. Then he’d stuck a needle between his toes. Now, he realizes, it’s truer than it ever was before. In two weeks, he will climb the steps of a courthouse and get a new name and a new family. 

“Yeah. I guess we are,” he says. 

“The party was actually kind of fun.”

“You _ definitely _had a good time, man. I’m gonna have to sneak you into the outhouse. Better pray Matt and Lainie aren’t waiting up.”

Clay laughs with him. His cheeks are red and his eyes, however drunk, are full of life. _ It’s enough. _

“Aaaaactually, I’m kinda nauseous. _ Nauseated_. Are we there yet?”

“Almost. But hey, it’s your car. Just know I’m not cleaning that shit up.”

“You, of all people, have _ no _ right to say that.”

________

The floorboards by Justin's bedroom door always creak the loudest. The doorknob jiggling and turning, the sound of feet on carpet, his mattress sinking with the weight of the body. A burnt plastic smell as a hand covers his mouth and a voice says _ stay still. _

The television is loud in the living room; a _ Wheel of Fortune _ rerun with the trumpets in the theme song. He likes how colorful the wheel is. Closes his eyes and can almost see it, reds and blues and greens blurring together as it spins. 

_ If you tell I’ll know, _ far away. The wheel spins and bright lights flash and the camera zooms in, plastic arrow clicking over the rods. Everything is happening somewhere else. _ Stop that, open your eyes. _On the ceiling, a woman in a sparkling dress crosses the stage to reveal the letters on the board.

Then it’s over and the hands pull his underwear back on. The doorknob jiggles and the floorboards creak, each noise in reverse. If he doesn’t move he can hear the _ click click click _ as the wheel slows, and slows, but does not stop.

(_Dissociation _ is a word he’ll hear later. Slipping away on the inside when running or fighting isn't an option, out of his body and into the nothing. It will become second nature: his mother’s worst overdose as though played on an old film reel at the end of a tunnel, the night of Jessica’s party smudged through frosted glass, stressful algebra tests where the numbers stop making sense.

It will outlive its usefulness. Heroin is a new nothing in its bright white light and warmth, but it will outlive its usefulness too. Justin will be left suddenly and unceremoniously with only with the tactile burden of _ feeling_, its messiness, everything happening at once.

Rigid in a sunroom-turned-office, Justin will say, “I could still score. It would be easy. I wouldn’t feel like this. I wouldn’t have to deal with any of this.”

“Do you think it would help?” Like she’s curious, like it’ll be okay if he says yes.

Instead, an admission even to himself, fragile but somehow true: “I don’t think it ever did.”)

________

The night before they sign the adoption papers, Justin sits next to Clay on his bed and tells the truth. It isn’t the first time but it is the hardest.

He tells him things he thinks he’ll understand: about the CPS file, and breaking his arm, and showering at school when the township turned the water off and the Walkers were out of town. And in broad strokes and a voice that shakes, he tells him the parts he might not understand. About Paul, and Bryce on top of Jess at the party, and Oakland. 

“I felt like it was my fault. Like—like all of it happened because I’m wrong. And that saying it would mean all of it was real, would mean that it happened, and-” he stops, swallowing the rest in a wet rasp. Looks at his hands and waits and waits and waits. 

Then Clay finally speaks, voice low and tremulous in a way Justin has never heard it before. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Yeah,” he breathes, and finds there is no part of it that’s hollow. Like hearing Clay say it with such certainty, so void of disgust or pity, makes it more true. It isn’t until the almost imperceptible sniffle that he looks over.

“You’re crying," Justin says. _Stop it. Please don't._

“Yeah, I’m fucking crying,” Clay huffs. “I’m just—I’m really sorry.”

“Why would you be? You saved me. You brought me back."

“I’m still sorry it happened. I’m sorry you had to deal with it alone."

Justin hums, leans until their shoulders touch. “Not alone anymore."

“You saved me too. More than once. So we’re probably even.” Clay scrubs at his face, but leans against him in turn. Then, so quietly it’s almost a whisper, he adds, “I meant it when I said I needed you. I still do.”

Justin remembers sitting at the bus station, remembers reading the text. What it meant then and what it means now. It doesn’t make sense that this is when his shoulders start to shake and his breath comes in hitches, but it happens anyway. 

“Okay. Then I guess we’re stuck with each other,” Justin laughs, and it’s choked with tears and relief at the same time.

This time, when Clay wraps his arms around him, he doesn’t hesitate. Holds him back steady and tight and breathes. It’s the easiest thing he's ever done.

________

In months and then years, the truth will be this: Justin won’t ever really know what it means to _ find himself on the other side. _

There will come a time when even the memory of the heroin’s great nothing is hazy and indistinct, but he will always itch for the perfect release of a needle when he’s afraid. He’ll still have nightmares, sometimes. He’ll say or do the wrong things at the wrong times.

Then, too, there will be moments—the sound of Clay laughing at some joke, Jessica’s smile as she adjusts his graduation cap, the warmth of Matt’s palm on his shoulder—when he will suspect he’s getting there. He will be needed, and he won’t lie, and none of them will look away. And it's more than enough_._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That’s it! I really really hope you enjoyed. It’s been forever since I’ve written fic and I’m rusty, so the 10k+ words felt like quite the marathon. I really appreciate the kudos and thoughtful comments; thank you so much. 
> 
> There are a few one-shots within this fic’s “timeline” I’d like to write eventually. Right now, though, I’m tentatively outlining a chaptered Clay/Justin teenage runaway “road trip” AU that’s been stuck in my head. Let me know if that sounds like something you’d like to read.

**Author's Note:**

> Working on part 2, will try to get that up soon. Any/all feedback is deeply appreciated. <3


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